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Tag: David Allen

The System is the Result

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Goals are useful. A goal points you in the direction you want to go, gives you a metric by which to measure progress, and ideally provides the motivation to get there.

But goals don’t produce results. A behavioral system (including automated behaviors) produce the actual results. Your system of diet and exercise will produce physical and health results. Your system of saving and investing will produce wealth results. Your system of communicating and being kind and generous to people will produce relationship results.

They may not always be great results. That depends on the quality of your system, your compatibility with the system you’ve chosen, and how effectively you implement it.

I’ve managed to overcome health problems by tweaking my diet and supplements, and those system continue to work well for me. I feel pretty good about my saving and investing system too. My chess system, on the other hand, needs a lot of work. I only know a few openings, I fall into simple traps, and I too often impulsively make the first decent move I see without considering other options. But I’m working on it.

Writing, chess, and racquetball are three skills I’m actively developing. Some of the work is just doing the thing a lot. Learning new techniques and practicing those techniques — actively pushing the boundaries of your skill and paying the learning tax — is a big part of getting better. So where does the system part come in? What does that even mean?

How to Discover Your Life Purpose, Set a Primary Goal, and Stay On Track

Unless you are the Remover of Obstacles and Lord of Beginnings, you’ll probably need to pick just one goal at a time.

In my last post I wrote about why I think setting goals is important. I addressed some of my own reservations regarding goal-setting. Is ambitious goal-setting selfish? Is it obnoxious and annoying to others?

I suggest you read that post first. But if you’re ready to get into the details, my five step system for exploring life purpose and setting a primary goal is below.

It’s a long post, but it’s the whole deal. I’ve come to this system after decades of diversions and hard-won experience. So get a fresh cup of coffee, and welcome to my world.

Step 1: Soul-Searching, Purpose & Calling

Seneca’s reputation may suffer as a result of self-promotion guru Tim Ferriss quoting him so much. But before the Seneca backlash is in full swing, I’ll get this relevant quote in:

Force Multipliers In Life

Force multipliers in effect.

A force multiplier is something that increases effectiveness.  The term has military origins — factors like high morale, advanced technology, or brilliant tactics could all be considered force multipliers.  The Mongols used horse archery, silk underclothes (to prevent infection from piercing wounds), and a fearsome reputation as force multipliers.

Applied to life in general, what kind of factors function as force multipliers?  What areas of life, if improved or optimized, make us more effective in every other life area?

Two New Essays by Paul Graham

Having a good think.

Paul Graham has two new essays up, and both are must-reads.

The first essay, The Top Idea in Your Mind, points out that our minds tend to fully engage with only one idea at a time, and that it’s easy to fritter away our mental power by worrying about money or petty disputes.  “What you think about in the shower” may in fact be the most important thing in your life (in terms of problem solving and creative progress) and it’s important not to waste the power of our subconscious on mundane issues.

This overlaps with some of David Allen’s ideas — in Getting Things Done Allen states that the goal is to have a “mind like water.”  You don’t want to use up your mental processing power with remembering to buy laundry detergent, and to call so-and-so back; you want to save your brainpower for creativity and problem solving.

Graham’s second new essay, The Acceleration of Addictiveness, discusses how technological progress is a dual-edged sword; we continue to make things that we want, but at the same time we make things we want but don’t want to want (like cigarettes).  Since everything in modern life is so addictive (or at least alluring), a statistically “normal” modern lifestyle (enhanced by caffeine, alcohol, artificial light, processed foods, the internet, TV, video games, etc.) is not really normal or healthful in terms of our evolutionary biology.  In fact you may appear to be eccentric if you take steps to be truly healthy.

As someone who takes steps to reduce my exposure to artificial light, and who favors a paleolithic diet, I can relate to this.  Everyone in my life is quite tolerant (and in fact interested) in my lifestyle choices, but I still feel like an oddball at times.

Geneticist Spencer Wells has related thoughts on this topic — how every aspect of modernity is at odds with what is “normal” according to our genetic makeup (genetically we’re still paleolithic hominds, more or less).

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